We already noted that the cable industry is really trying to stick its head as far in the sand as possible when it comes to the fact that many customers are starting to drop their cable TV subscriptions. First, they pretended it wasn’t happening at all, and that they had somehow “beat” the internet (based on a single anecdote of someone who had dropped cable, but gone back to it a year later). Then, when news came out of massive numbers of people dropping their cable TV plans, they said that they weren’t really cord cutters, because they were only canceling service due to the down economy. The latest strategy appears to be to insult the cord cutters, saying that while the idea behind cord cutters was that it would be young, technologically savvy folks, it’s actually people who the cable companies just don’t care about: poor older folks. Seriously. At least that’s the argument being made by one of the cable industry’s favorite talking heads, who tries to minimize the cord cutters by saying they’re “poor” people who “eat a dog’s breakfast.”

Mr. Moffett said the image of the cord-cutter had been that of a “cutting-edge technologist” who preferred to bypass cable to watch programming on computers and on an ever-proliferating array of devices. “The reality is it’s someone who’s 40 years old and poor and settling for a dog’s breakfast of Netflix and short-form video.”

Sounds kind of like the cable industry is moving from the “denial” stage to the “anger” stage of grief…

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